New director, scholars join Society of
Fellows

Princeton NJ -- A New director and three new postdoctoral
scholars have joined the Society of Fellows in the Liberal
Arts this year.

The program, begun in 2000-01, is intended to attract
some of the best recent Ph.D. recipients in the humanities,
social sciences and natural sciences to the campus each
year. It is made possible through the generosity of Trustee
Emeritus Lloyd Cotsen.

The new director is Leonard Barkan, the Arthur Marks
'19 Professor of Comparative Literature. He succeeds
Alexander Nehamas. Barkan came to Princeton in 2001 from New
York University, where he had been the Samuel Rudin
University Professor of the Humanities and professor of
English and fine arts since 1994. He also served as director
of the New York Institute for the Humanities from 1997 to
2001. Previously, he was a faculty member at the University
of Michigan and Northwestern University.

Barkan's fields of interest are Renaissance literature
and art history, as well as drama. His publications include
"Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the
Making of Renaissance Culture," "Transuming Passion:
Ganymede and the Erotics of Humanism" and "The Gods Made
Flesh: Metamorphosis and the Pursuit of Paganism." He has
also edited a series of books on Renaissance drama published
by Northwestern University Press. A graduate of Swarthmore
College, Barkan earned his master's degree from Harvard
University and his doctoral degree from Yale University.

The new fellows were chosen from among 520 applicants for
three-year terms. Based in the Joseph Henry House, the
Cotsen Fellows teach half-time in their academic department
or the Humanities Council and pursue their own research.
They are:

 Francisco Prado-Vilar, who recently received
his Ph.D. in the history of art and architecture at Harvard
University with a dissertation titled "In the Shadow of the
Gothic Idol: The 'Cantigas de Santa Maria' and the Imagery
of Love and Conversion." His research project will expand on
his dissertation, developing an alternative model for
understanding Gothic visual culture. He also will continue
his research on Spanish painting.

Prado-Vilar has published on topics ranging from the
discourse of the gift at the caliphal court of al-Andalus to
the poetics of the body in Romanesque sculpture. An
award-winning teaching fellow at Harvard, he has taught
courses on topics such as general introductions in art and
visual culture, theory and methodology of art history and
the meanings of abstraction in the 20th century. This
semester, he is part of a faculty team in humanistic studies
teaching the first half of an interdisciplinary introduction
to Western culture, "From Antiquity to the Middle Ages." In
the spring, he will teach a medieval studies/art and
archaeology seminar on "Visions of Love, Sacred and Profane,
in the Medieval Mediterranean."

 Alexander Rehding, who received his Ph.D. in
musicology in 1999 from the University of Cambridge. His
dissertation on musical thought in Wilhelmine Germany,
"Nature and Nationhood in Hugo Riemann's Dualistic Theory of
Harmony," will be published by Cambridge University Press.
His publications also include a prize-winning article on the
origins of modern musicology, an edited volume of essays on
the history of music theory and articles on Liszt, Wagner
and Stravinsky. While at Princeton, he will pursue a new
research project on musical monumentality and the critical
ambivalence it elicits by examining a number of 19th-century
musical works and their contexts.

Rehding has held fellowships at Cambridge and at the
University of Pennsylvania. He has taught a broad range of
subjects, from "Music and Society in Weimar Germany" to
"Musical Acoustics." This fall, he is leading a graduate
seminar in musicology titled "Monumentality in 19th-Century
Music." In the spring, he will team teach the latter half of
an interdisciplinary introduction to Western culture offered
by humanistic studies, "From the Renaissance to the Modern
Period."

 Hairong Yan, who just received her Ph.D. in
anthropology from the University of Washington with a
dissertation on "Development, Contradictions and the Specter
of Disposability: Rural Migrant Women in Search of
Self-Development in Post-Mao China." Her research project
will expand on her dissertation by analyzing the notion of
"suzhi," or quality, promoted by the post-socialist state as
an agent for economic development and as a measure of human
value.

Yan has published articles on Chinese proverbs,
modernization in East Asia and the debates around the
positioning of the native anthro-pologist. She has taught
both anthropology and international studies courses on East
Asian modernities. This fall, she is precepting
"Introduction to Anthropology" with Isabelle Clark-Deces. In
the spring, she will teach an undergraduate seminar titled
"Anthropology of Value" in the same department.

The three new fellows join five from the inaugural year
of the program and five from last year who are continuing
their work at Princeton in 2002-03.

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